According to last Sunday's New York Times, presidential candidates John
Forbes Kerry and George Walker Bush, are both descendants of Edmund Reade
(1563-1623) of Wickford, Essex in England. Kerry is a member of the 10th
generation, Bush of the 12th generation, making them ninth cousins twice removed.

The information was based on research by Gary Boyd Roberts "the genealogical
historian," who shows the two are related through at least seven additional
lines: three of them as 10th cousins once or twice removed, once as 11th c, once
r, once as "Half 12th" once removed, once as 12th c twice removed and once as
14th cousins (>from John Manning of Downe, Kent; d. 1543) not-at-all removed.

Roberts commented that such close relationships are to be expected among any
two people with "significant" New England colonial ancestry. The same surely
holds for descendants of European (and perhaps other) Jews, though it would
have been diluted in the past centuries in the USA as Jews >from different
countries intermarried.

Michael Bernet, New York